


Elevator Freeway

by awesomesockes, whumphoarder



Series: Christ, What Now? [16]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, Blood Loss, Delirium, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt Peter Parker, Medbay, Peter Parker Whump, Peter Parker is a Mess, Serious Injuries, Shopping Malls, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Worried Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22445122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awesomesockes/pseuds/awesomesockes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whumphoarder/pseuds/whumphoarder
Summary: Delirious and bleeding out from a gunshot wound, Peter struggles to describe his location to a very worried Tony.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Christ, What Now? [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1282181
Comments: 124
Kudos: 858





	Elevator Freeway

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Sally](https://sallyidss.tumblr.com/) and [Cat](https://xxx-cat-xxx.tumblr.com/) for beta reading!

Peter’s not entirely sure how he got here.

He remembers the rush of swinging through the streets of Queens in pursuit of the mob boss’s hit man—a burly-looking dude going by the name of ‘Gumdrop’. He recalls following the speeding Camaro into an underground parking garage, chasing the vehicle from level to level until they arrived at a dead end. Vaguely, he remembers seeing the man throw the car into park and leap out of the driver’s side door.

And if he thinks really hard, Peter can somewhat recall feeling the hairs on his arms stand on end and seeing a flash of metal as Gumdrop’s hand emerged from inside his jacket, followed by a resounding bang. 

Everything after that is a bit of a blur.

Peter doesn’t know exactly how he made it from the lower level of the parking garage up into the brightly lit shopping mall above. His right side is throbbing; he presses his hand to it as he limps forward, only vaguely aware of the trail of blood he’s leaving in his wake. He passes an H&M, a sunglasses kiosk, a Dippin’ Dots stand, some coin-operated massage chairs, a bookstore...

That’s when Peter’s gaze drifts upwards to the second level, landing on three glowing red letters: CVS.

 _A pharmacy._ Yes. That’s what he needs. They’ll have… whatever that stuff is that you’re supposed to put on wounds. Crap, what’s it called? It starts with a Z.

He frowns. No, that’s not right. It _has_ a Z, but it starts…. with a...C? G? 

“Gauze!” The word pops into his mind and out of his mouth. “Gauze… gauze… gauze...” Maybe if he keeps repeating it to himself, he won’t forget. Peter limps past a Jamba Juice, a Lush, a Hot Topic. A few shoppers turn their heads to stare at him as he goes by. 

Smiling weakly underneath his mask, Peter lifts his bloody hand up to give a small wave. It’s always nice meeting fans. Hopefully they won’t mind him not stopping for a photo; he’s not feeling so great right now. His stomach is killing him. 

Oh, right. It’s _literally_ killing him. Ha.

Where was he going again?

“Gauze… gauze…”—Peter’s eye catches sight of a shark plushie in the window of a Build-A-Bear workshop—“...Jaws...“ He giggles, recalling the first time Ben ever showed him the film. Seven-year-old Peter had sworn up and down that it wouldn’t give him nightmares. Afterward, he’d insisted that his sudden aversion to swimming pools was completely unrelated.

Peter stops. Something wet is dripping down the inside of his leg.

Well that’s embarrassing. He hasn’t peed his pants since second grade when Ms. Webber wouldn’t let him leave in the middle of the science lesson because—

Oh, wait, no. It’s just the blood dripping down from the wound. Phew. Dodged a bullet there. 

_If only I’d dodged the other one._

A snort escapes Peter and he barks out a short, almost hysterical laugh at his own internal humor, causing more passersby to turn their heads. He smiles and nods to them, then nearly loses his balance.

“Peter, you have lost a significant amount of blood,” a female voice informs, startling him. He spins around dizzily to locate her, but only finds a somewhat horrified-looking mother quickly pushing a baby stroller away from him. 

Ah. That’s right—the lady is _inside_ his suit. _Suit Lady._

Karen goes on, “In accordance with my ‘Big Boo-Boo Protocol’, I have taken the liberty of contacting Mr. Stark regarding your injury. Connecting you now.”

Peter lets out a tiny giggle, nearly stumbling into a sign advertising ‘Cinnabons 2 for $5’. “Why? So he can… kiss it all better?”

“Kiss what better?” a new voice questions. _When did Mr. Stark get here?_ “I got an alert—what’s going on?”

“Uh…” Peter thinks for a second. It’s all a bit confusing. He decides to say the one thing he’s already decided. “I didn’t piss myself.”

“Well, that’s something, I guess,” Tony scoffs. He sounds… weird. Far away. A wave of lightheadedness comes over Peter. He pauses to grip the foot of the statue beside him.

Peter can hear movement in the background over the line, along with FRIDAY’s muffled voice rattling off a string of numbers and letters. He can’t make them all out, but there’s definitely an ‘O2’ and a ‘BP’ and a ‘93’ over… something. A fraction, ugh. Fractions are the worst. There’ll be some of those on his algebra II test tomorrow. He was supposed to be studying for it, not taking down Gumdrop and his gang. Maybe if he had, these numbers would make more sense. 

Ugh. His stomach hurts so much—it’s hard to focus. He’s never had a stomach ache this bad before. Maybe it’s his appendix? No, he already had that out. They don’t grow back, do they?

“Hang on, did you get _shot?”_

“Ohhh…” That makes _far more_ sense. “Yeah… I think I did,” Peter admits, touching his fingers gingerly to the wound and wincing. “Ow...”

“Jesus Christ, kid,” Tony breathes over the line. “Why is your tracker not working? Did you fucking disable it again?”

(Peter sure hopes not—that sounds like a really stupid thing for him to do.)

There’s the sound of fingers snapping twice over the line. “Hey, focus, kid! Where are you?” Tony demands.

“Um…” Peter lifts his palm, leaving a bloody handprint on what he now notices is the boot of a statue of Captain America saluting a flag. “Steve?”

“No, this is Tony,” his mentor retorts. “You’d _better not_ be with Steve—he’s on a mission in Vancouver.”

Things are getting blurry now, all the sights and sounds and smells mixing together. He was going somewhere, but where was... “Gauze!” Peter suddenly remembers and starts walking again.

“Gauze?” Tony repeats. “Gauze is not a place—I need a location. Is there a street sign? What do you see around you?”

Peter glances around idly as he moves forward. His foot slips a bit on some blood but he manages to stay upright. “There’s… water…” he reports, passing a fountain which is shooting water into the air. “And... a train”—he hears a ‘toot-toot’ as a miniature train full of open-mouthed children drives past him toward the mall’s play area—“and… lights.” He squints against the neon signs and breathes in. “Smells like pretzels.”

Tony heaves out in exasperation. “That could be literally anywhere in New York, kid. Do you see any _signs?”_

Peter forces himself to squint up at a blue sign above him. There’s a picture of a box with several stick figures and two arrows on top, one pointing up and the other down. “Elevator,” he deciphers. That seems important for some reason, though he can’t quite recall why.

 _“Elevator?”_ Tony sounds utterly confused now. Peter feels a little bad for him. “You said you were outside, right? There was a train? And water? Where the hell are you?”

Peter continues to stagger forward. A man in a wheelchair exiting the elevator gives him a double-take and pivots his chair around, eyes wide. Peter steps past him over the threshold and crashes against the interior wall.

“Goin’ up,” Peter slurs. He slaps a hand at the control panel, pushing several buttons and leaving a smear of blood. The doors slide closed. “‘M really tired…” He sinks down the wall to the floor.

“Hey, hey, don’t you pass out on me!” Tony orders. His voice sounds muffled, almost like Peter’s underwater. “I’m gonna find you—FRIDAY’s searching security footage—but you need to keep talking, alright?”

There’s a sudden lurch as the elevator jerks upward. Peter squeezes his eyes shut and leans his head back against the wall. Once, while driving upstate on I-81, Happy let him open the sunroof and stick his head out to feel the rush of the wind. This is kind of like that, just more… vertical.

Tony says something else, but Peter’s ears are ringing too loud to make it out. “M’ on the freeway, M’s’r Stark...” Peter murmurs. “The elevator freeway.”

Then there’s only darkness.

**X**

_“The elevator freeway?_ Really, kid?”

Peter rolls his eyes in his mentor’s direction. “I tried, okay?”

He’s lying propped up on a hospital bed in the tower’s Medbay. There are two separate IVs attached to his arm, as well as another line for a blood transfusion—his second one already today. The bullet in his side has been surgically removed, the wound stitched closed and dressed with bandages. It still hurts, but it’s nothing compared to the throbbing pain from before. He’s definitely on the good stuff.

“Well, he _was_ in hypovolemic shock, Tony,” Bruce points out. He holds the straw of the fruit punch flavored juice box to Peter’s lips so the kid can take a sip. “Lost nearly fifty percent of his blood. Maybe cut him some slack.”

Tony crosses his arms over his chest. “No, I will _not_ cut the kid who disabled his own tracker to hunt down an organized crime ring— _again,_ mind you—any slack. It was _by sheer dumb luck_ that we got there in time. He was riding that elevator freeway of his straight to the pearly gates.”

Peter glances down at his blanket-covered legs, playing with a piece of fuzz stuck to the thread. 

“You know how we finally found you?” Tony addresses Peter. “FRIDAY tracked down a fucking _TikTok video_ that someone had posted of ‘Spider-Man bleeding through a mall’—which now has gone viral, by the way.” He pauses. “Not to mention you’ve traumatized half a shopping mall.”

“Eh, I don’t know about _that...”_ Peter says, looking up with the smallest of smirks. “Think it was worse on Black Friday.”

Without changing his unamused stance, Tony kicks the rolling stool next to him closer to the bed and sits down on it with a heavy sigh. “Kid, you’re gonna be the death of me,” he declares.

**Author's Note:**

> Today marks the one-year anniversary of our collab series, “Christ What Now”! To celebrate, we decided to combine (1) inside joke (elevator freeway) + the weirdest prompt we’ve ever received (“Peter bleeding his way through a mall”) + an arbitrary goal/deadline (hitting exactly 100,000 words in one year). We hope you get half as much a kick out of this as we did :D
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! Please let us know your thoughts in the comments—we really appreciate getting feedback on our work <3
> 
> Come and hang out on tumblr if you want: [whumphoarder](https://whumphoarder.tumblr.com/) & [awesomesockes](http://awesomesockes.tumblr.com/)


End file.
